Decorah – The crowd at President Barack Obama’s town hall meeting was enthusiastic and largely supportive.

When asked to assess his presidency, many took the opportunity to bash Congress.

“In general, I support him,” said Janet Alexander, a retiree from Decorah. “I just wish we had a different Congress.”

Obama, too, singled out partisan dysfunction in the legislative branch as the reason for political stalemate and, specifically, the downgrade earlier this month in the nation’s credit rating.

The downgrade “was an assessment that our Congress was not able to come up with the compromises to move our country forward,” Obama said. “I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty frustrated by that.“

To which one women in the crowd shouted, “Hello!”

Afterward, Luther College student Jim Penning said that message was the one that resonated most with him.

“We’re not two parties against each other; we’re one country,” Penning said. “The political game has got to stop. We’ve got to really get Congress to do something instead of sit around and argue with each other.”